Tagged / study recruitment

NIHR Be Part of Research platform

Guidance, NHS, Research Ethics

The NIHR Be Part of Research platform is an online service that makes it easy for research participants to find and take part in health and social care research. Participants may search for trials and studies taking place looking at certain health conditions and in locations accessible to them.

Clinical researchers may also make use of the service to extend their recruitment and widen their recruitment methods, as the platform has been designed to make it easier for researchers and potential study participants to find each other.

Using Be Part of Research to recruit participants

To use the service for your recruitment, the study must meet the following requirements:

  • Be funded or supported by the NIHR. This includes studies on the NIHR Clinical Research Network Portfolio.
  • Have Research Ethics Committee approval to use the service as a recruitment tool.
  • Have a dedicated point of contact such as a pre-screener or website for interested volunteers to engage with your research team.

Getting your study onto the Be Part of Research platform

Once your study has been registered on either ISRCTN, ClinicalTrials.gov, or on the NIHR Clinical Research Network (CRN) Central Portfolio Management System (CPMS), your project will then appear on Be Part of Research. Given those visiting the site are mostly patients and members of the public, medical and scientific terminology should be omitted when writing your study summary, with plain English used to ensure the information is accessible to a broad audience. In order to do this, you should:
  • Keep it short – but don’t oversimplify it. The reader must understand what the study is trying to achieve.
  • Imagine you are talking to the reader.
  • Take out any jargon.
  • Make sure you cover the what, why, when, where and how so they have the basics of your study.

Additionally, to make sure that participants contact the appropriate person, the contact details provided on ISRCTN or ClinicalTrials.gov should be up to date and accurate. In general, the registry record should be monitored continuously so that any changes are reflected on Be Part of Research as soon as possible.

Further support/contact

If you have any questions regarding the platform or regarding clinical research in general, please email Suzy Wignall, Clinical Governance Advisor: swignall@bournemouth.ac.uk or clinicalresearch@bournemouth.ac.uk

BU PhD student publishes in The Conversation

international, Publishing, Student Engagement, Women's Academic Network, writing

Congratulations the Abier Hamidi, PhD student in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences (FHSS) whose PhD work was published in The Conversation this week (24 April) under the title Social media now trumps traditional family networks in Libya – my Facebook survey reached 446,000 women.  Her piece in The Conversation on the recruitment of female participants for a PhD study in a rather patriarchal society brings together issues of anonymity, gender, and wider social culture.

This is Abier’s PhD research is supervised by Dr. Pramod Regmi, Senior Lecturer in International Health and the Global Engagement Lead in the Department of Nursing Sciences, and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH).

Congratulations!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

 

Research study recruitment – adults aged 60 years or older

NMES applied to the quadriceps muscles

We are looking for 12 healthy adults aged 60 years or over to take part in a PhD research study. The study is an evaluation of a six week intervention of home-based neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) that aims to strengthen the quadriceps muscles in the legs.

 

What is neuromuscular electrical stimulation? (NMES)

Neuromuscular electrical stimulation sends electrical impulses to nerves. This causes muscles to contract involuntarily. Doing so can increase muscle strength and offset the effects of muscle disuse. NMES is often use to improve muscle function and to build strength before or after surgery or following a period of disuse. We want to test how effective it is at improving quadriceps muscle endurance.

What would taking part involve?

  • A baseline assessment at the Orthopaedic Research Institute (ORI), where we will collect data on your leg muscle strength.
  • Six weeks of home-based NMES training with biweekly telephone reviews.
  • A follow up assessment at ORI where your baseline measures will be repeated.

We are unable to pay participants, but can offer a £20 John Lewis voucher and a strength assessment report as a small thank you.

Primus equipment used to test leg muscle strength

How do I find out more information?

The participant information sheet for this study can be found here.

If you would like any further information, or are interested in taking part in the study, please contact the lead researcher Louise Burgess (lburgess@bournemouth.ac.uk, 01202 961651).